How Can Schools Get More Value From Their Maths Technology in 2027?

Budget planning always comes with difficult decisions.

For Heads of Maths and school leaders planning for 2027, that often means looking back at the resources used this year and deciding what stays, what goes and where there’s a case for investing more.

Maths technology is part of that conversation. But working out whether a platform is delivering value isn’t as simple as looking at the subscription price or how many students have logged in.

A better place to start is with what the technology is actually doing for your maths department.

Is it saving teachers time? Is it helping them understand where students are getting stuck? Is it making differentiation more manageable? And, most importantly, is it supporting the way your teachers want to teach maths?

Those questions can tell you much more about whether an investment is earning its place in next year’s budget.

How can schools measure the ROI of maths technology?

Return on investment in a school doesn’t fit neatly into a financial calculation.

Of course, cost matters. But so does teacher time.

If teachers are spending hours creating differentiated activities, marking practice, identifying gaps and pulling together resources from different places, there’s a cost attached to that too.

The same applies to a platform that’s been purchased but rarely makes it into everyday teaching.

When reviewing a resource, it can be helpful to look beyond what it costs per student and ask what you’re getting back from it.

That might be less time spent on repetitive tasks. It might be better visibility into student understanding, easier differentiation, more targeted practice or simply having fewer disconnected resources for teachers to manage.

That’s where the real value starts to become clearer.

How can maths technology reduce teacher workload?

Think about what happens before and after a maths lesson.

Teachers are finding or creating questions, adjusting work for different students, checking responses, working out who needs help and deciding what to teach or revisit next.

A digital platform won’t, and shouldn’t, remove the teacher from that process. But it should make parts of it easier.

For example, if teachers can quickly assign appropriate practice, see where students are struggling and respond without manually marking every question first, that’s time they can spend on the parts of teaching where they’re needed most.

When you’re looking at next year’s budget, teacher workload is worth putting alongside the subscription price.

How can maths technology help teachers identify student learning gaps?

A final score can tell you that a student struggled. It doesn’t always tell you why.

That’s an important distinction in maths.

A student might understand the method but make an arithmetic mistake halfway through. Another might have a misconception that means they’re approaching the entire problem incorrectly. If both students simply receive a red cross at the end, a teacher is missing useful information.

Good maths technology should help teachers get closer to the student’s thinking.

That means looking beyond completion rates and final answers and considering whether the information coming back to teachers is actually useful in deciding what to do next.

When teachers can see where students are getting stuck, they’re better placed to decide whether a student needs more practice, a different explanation or support with an earlier concept.

How can maths technology make differentiation easier for teachers?

Most maths teachers aren’t teaching a room of students who are all ready for exactly the same question at exactly the same time.

One student might need to revisit prerequisite knowledge. Another needs more practice with the current concept. Someone else is ready to move on.

Teachers have always managed those differences. The question is whether the technology they’re using makes that job easier.

If teachers still need to create several versions of an activity, move between multiple resources and manually work out what each student needs next, the platform may not be taking much off their plate.

Technology can be particularly useful when it helps teachers respond to different levels of understanding while keeping them in control of what students are learning.

The goal isn’t to automate differentiation for the sake of it. It’s to make it more manageable in a classroom where 25 or 30 students may need different levels of support.

How should digital technology fit into maths teaching?

There’s a danger in judging maths technology by how much screen time it can create.

More digital activity doesn’t automatically mean better learning.

A maths lesson might involve a teacher explaining a concept at the board, students working through problems by hand, a class discussion about different approaches and digital practice to consolidate what they’ve learned.

Those things don’t need to compete with each other.

Digital tools are most useful when there’s a clear reason for using them, whether that’s giving students targeted practice, providing feedback, helping teachers identify gaps or supporting revision.

For school leaders reviewing their technology, it’s worth considering how naturally a platform fits into the way maths is already being taught.

If teachers have to redesign the way they teach just to accommodate a platform, that’s worth questioning. If it can support existing classroom practice and give teachers more options, it’s much easier for it to become genuinely useful.

How can schools reduce overlap between maths platforms and resources?

School technology tends to accumulate over time.

A department might have one platform for practice, another for assessment and another for revision, alongside textbooks, worksheets and resources teachers have created themselves.

There may be a good reason for each of them. But budget planning is a useful time to put everything on the table and look for overlap.

Which resources are teachers actually using?

Which ones solve a distinct problem?

Where are you paying for similar functionality across multiple platforms?

And are teachers having to jump between systems to get everything they need?

Getting better ROI doesn’t necessarily mean choosing the cheapest option. Sometimes it means simplifying the mix and investing more deliberately in the resources that teachers actually use.

How should schools decide whether to renew a maths platform?

Usage data is a useful starting point, but logins shouldn’t be the only measure of success.

A teacher logging into a platform doesn’t necessarily mean it has become valuable to their teaching.

Instead, look at how it’s being used.

Is it useful across different year levels and topics? Are teachers returning to it throughout the term? Can they use it for different needs, such as classwork, homework, consolidation, revision or assessment? Does it give them information they can act on?

It’s also worth simply asking teachers.

They’ll usually tell you very quickly which resources save them time, which ones work well with their students and which ones they only use occasionally because the school happens to have a licence.

Another useful question is: if we removed this resource tomorrow, what would teachers and students actually lose?

The answer can tell you a lot about the role it plays in your maths department.

What should school leaders consider when planning their 2027 maths budget?

Before renewing a maths platform or investing in something new, it can help to bring the conversation back to a few practical questions:

• What problem are we using this resource to solve?
• How often are our teachers actually using it?
• What does it save teachers from having to do manually?
• Does it give teachers useful information about student understanding?
• Can it support students working at different levels?
• Does it fit alongside the way our teachers already teach?
• Are we paying for another resource that does something similar?
• What would our teachers and students lose if we stopped using it?

There isn’t necessarily one platform that will tick every box for every school.

The important thing is knowing why each resource is there and whether the value it provides matches the priorities of your maths department.

How can Mathspace support your school’s maths priorities?

At Mathspace, we believe technology should give teachers more visibility and students more support without trying to replace the teacher.

Students work through maths step by step, rather than only entering a final answer. When they get stuck, they can receive support as they work, while teachers can see more of what has happened along the way.

Teachers can use Mathspace to set curriculum-aligned work, support students working at different levels, identify areas where students may need more help and make decisions about what to focus on next.

And it doesn’t need to replace the other parts of a maths classroom.

Mathspace can sit alongside explicit teaching, class discussion, handwritten working and textbooks, giving teachers another way to provide practice and understand how students are progressing.

Because ultimately, the measure of a maths platform isn’t how much technology it puts into a classroom.

It’s whether it helps teachers and students get more out of the time they have together.

Are you reviewing your school’s maths resources for 2027?

If you’re currently planning next year’s budget or reviewing the resources your maths department uses, our team would be happy to learn more about your priorities and talk through where Mathspace could fit.